Designing for Social Impact: Success Stories in Egypt

This panel will examine design activism and the role of designers to promote social change. Join us as we discuss the works and experiences of 3 pioneering entities in Egypt that work in the area of Design for Social Impact and community-based participatory design.

Panelists: Ahmed Mansour is an architect, who, in 2009, received his M.Sc. in conservation of monuments and historical sites at the Raymond Lemaire International Centre for Conservation (RLICC) at KULeuven, Belgium. He has worked on projects concerned with the rehabilitation and salvation of historical buildings and the regeneration of traditional residential areas. From July 2010 to December 2014, Mansour was the proxy scientific coordinator, a UNESCO consultant within the Urban Regeneration for Historic Cairo project, aiming at developing a conservation and management plan for the World Heritage site of historic Cairo. He is the founder of Mansour for Architecture and Conservation since 2018 and is currently involved in a number of conservation and rehabilitation projects. Additionally, Mansour is the heritage industries coordinator at Al Athar Lina Heritage Design Thinking School, a program that aims to use the heritage of al-Khalifa as a creative and economic resource for teenagers, young designers and craftsmen.

Ahmed Saafan is a Cairo-based architectural designer, who focuses on community-centered architecture. Upon his graduation from Misr International University, Saafan pursued a promising career, where he first taught at the University then art at a local school in India whilst volunteering in various permacultural projects around the subcontinent. In 2017, he worked for leading design firms in Cairo, such as A for Architecture, Cairo Urban Sketchers, and Takween. In 2018, he was commissioned to design the Dawar El Ezba Cultural Center, for which he received global awards, recognitions and nominations for “Building of the Year” by prestigious architecture and design magazines and was published on websites and in books. Saafan recently participated in the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism and is now working on prospective urban, architecture, landscape, exhibition and community projects within Egypt and globally and is eager to share his collective design process with communities in need. 

Mohamed Abdel Samad is a social entrepreneur who promotes the concept of responsible, proactive capitalism wherein firms embark on a journey to avoid any activities that would negatively impact the community; thus striving to create shared value where both the firm and community profit. With an effort to mitigate climate change and build sustainable communities, Abdel Samad started “Shagara” in 2011, a multidisciplinary design studio that employs design thinking and green architecture techniques to integrate vegetation into human life. Shagara’s leading project is “Shagara at School,” which provides a sustainable solution for overcrowded classrooms in Egyptian schools by employing its rooftops for building “green roof classrooms.” In 2015, he founded “Nutrients Recycling”, a biotech startup that employs living organisms to treat wastewater, while producing energy and protein rich biomass. Abdel Samad is also a member of the Global Shapers Community by the World Economic Forum, the Synergos Social Entrepreneur and the Switchers Network. Furthermore, he is a climate leader at Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project.

Moderator: Mohamed Radwan is a multidisciplinary designer, principal architect of RADs and design studio manager at LEAD group. Between 2012 and 2016, Radwan was a teaching assistant at the American University in Cairo (AUC) and a lecturer at the Arab Academy of Science and Technology in the fields of graphic design, architecture, and interior design. He is deeply invested in experimenting with fusing Egyptian heritage with contemporary design trends by utilizing design thinking as an innovative problem-solving method. In April 2020, together with his cofounders Amr Orensa and Hisham El Essawy, Radwan founded Cairo Designathon – Egypt and the MENA region’s first and only collaborative design marathon. Radwan received various international and national awards, including DNA Paris Design Awards 2020 for his anti COVID-19 office pod system design “Qwork Pods”, Bronze A' Design Award 2021 for the same project, and Design Hero 2021 by A' Design Award in Como, Italy.